10 Grunge Songs That Are Insanely Heavy

After years of being a part of the public eye, there's no way of really pigeonhole-ing what the concept of grunge even is. It's not pop, but it does has it's tuneful moments. It's not necessarily alternative because it has the same hooks you'd find in a pop song. You can just call it rock, but just confining it to that genre still feels wrong. One thing that you can't take away from it though is that this is some heavy music.

Going through most of the repertoire from Seattle's prime era, you're going to hear a lot of stuff that almost verges on the metal side of the spectrum every now and again. Since this is a city that's known for being rainy most of the year, there's nothing better to do than to just chill out in your basement and write some of the heaviest riffs you know how, and these are enough to give some metal acts a run for their money.

Going through some of the heavy hitters of the day, these guys could have easily fit under the metal bill if they hadn't decided to make alt rock for a living. Even if not all of them came from Seattle, each of them were able to tap into something a little more primal than traditional rock and roll. It might be the side effects of all the rain, but for riffs like this, it has to come from your soul.

Before grunge really became a fashion statement, its roots were always in the punk scene. Even though not every band was copying the Ramones or anything, there was always that same sort of DIY approach going through the early days of Sub Pop Records. And at the top of the roster, Mudhoney burst onto the scene with a metallic version of the Stooges on Touch Me I'm Sick.

From the opening notes, this is a much more chaotic form of grunge than the Pearl Jams of the world, to the point where all the instruments sound like they're about to fall apart at any moment. This was around the time where grunge hadn't even gotten a name yet, and hearing these guys go for it throughout this song makes it feel like they're trying to blow out your speakers at every opportunity. And while Mark Arm is certainly not Freddie Mercury, his delivery does measure up to the sounds of hardcore punk, wailing his guts out and sounding like he's trying to force his way through the speakers to scream at you.

What makes everything heavy has to be the guitar sounds, which sound like your traditional hard rock tones if they had been left in a swamp for a few days. That's really the ethos of grunge though. It might be murky and a little bit dirty from a sonic perspective, but you can never really want to look away either.